Intellisense for Expression Blend 2 SP1 working again!

I found a message saying: “FYI I was able to get the Intellisense plugin working against 2.0 sp1 simply by recompiling the source against the 2.0 sp1 assemblies”. As a designer, it was a bit too short and cryptic for me. But I decided to have a go anyway. And it works!

Tonight I found this short cryptic message by Bennage on the MSDN Code Gallery site:

Blend 2.0 SP1
bennage
Oct 1 at 4:37 PM  FYI I was able to get the plugin working against 2.0 sp1 simply by recompiling the source against the 2.0 sp1 assemblies.

As a designer, it was a bit too short and cryptic for me. But I decided to have a go anyway. This it what I had to do do make Intellisense working again for Blend 2 SP1:

  1. Download the original BlendSense_Install.zip from the MSDN Code Gallery site:
    http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/BlendSense/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=1358
  2. Install the Addin as explained on the Homepage: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/BlendSense
    Blend.bat, Addins folder with a DLL and the Schemas Subfolder should all be in place. If you have a failed attempt to install BlendSense for Blend 2 SP1, you’ll probably be in good shape 😉
  3. Download the Code from the MSDN Code Gallery site:
    http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/BlendSense/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=1358
  4. Upzip it to your visual studio or Blend projects directory:
    c:\users\YOU\Documents\Expression\Expression Blend Projects
  5. Start Visual Studio or Expression Blend and load the Expression.Blend.Intellisense project
  6. Open the Solution Explorer or Project tab and check the References  folder to find several dll’s that are missing or invalid, marked by a yellow exclamation mark
  7. Right-click on the References folder and select Add Reference…
    Click the Browse tab in the Add Reference dialogbox and browse to your Blend 2 SP1 location: “c:\program files\Microsoft Expression\Blend 2”
  8. Select all the DLL files that are missing by keeping the Ctrl key down while clicking the filenames. Click OK. The yellow exclamation marks in the Solution Explorer or Project tab References folder will disappear.
  9. Build the project using Build/Rebuild Solution. If all is well, the build will succeed.
  10. Check the debug folder in de Expression.Blend.Intellisense folder for a DLL called Expression.Blend.Intellisense.dll (if you made a release build you’ll find it in the Release folder of course).
  11. Copy this file to the Add-In folder in the Expression Blend program folder: “c:\program files\Microsoft Expression\Blend 2\Addins” Replace the existing file with the same name but smaller in size with this new DLL. Don’t paste it in the Blend program folder, but in de Add-in folder.
  12. Run Blend.bat from the Blend Program folder.
    This contains the command:
    start Blend.exe -addin:Addins\Expression.Blend.Intellisense.dll
  13. Blend wil start and ask you to open your last project. Open the project.
    Press F11 twice or click the XAML tab at the top right of the working area in Blend.
  14. Press Ctrl + Spacebar inside any XAML statement to find intellisense working!

Thanks bennage for the original post at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/BlendSense/Thread/List.aspx and of course many, many thanks to Stefan Dobrev for making it all possible at http://blogs.telerik.com/StefanDobrev/Posts/08-08-04/IntelliSense_for_Expression_Blend.aspx

Hope this helps (I know it will!) Njoy!